Escape Room Gili Air: Inheritance

I wasn’t looking for escape rooms in Gili Air, a tiny tropical island off the coast of Lombok, and was frankly astounded to see a sign for one when I arrived. The island’s primary attractions are sun, sand and snorkelling, but I certainly wasn’t going to pass up the chance to play the unexpected game.

Their planned second room was apparently delayed by the pandemic, and at present they have just the one, Inheritance. Your task is to solve the puzzles left as a test of your worthiness by your rich and recently departed relative. This was explained by video in a stifling antechamber, and we were very eager to get into the air conditioned room of the game itself. Once in, the room charms with the Indonesian style of decorations and objects.

For us the low point of the game was early on. I dislike counting puzzles because they seem to always lead to trying a padlock code, going back and checking again, trying a slightly different code, and so on. In this instance it seemed aggravated by a lack of clarity on how to enter the numbers we were getting. In the game’s defence, once you’ve spotted everything you need to spot then the logic is clear and there’s little ambiguity – but that requires some keen observation, and without that there is a great deal of scope for confusion. We ended up taking 23 increasingly frustrated minutes to get that first code.

Despite another counting-based puzzle later on (!), I had few complaints about puzzle design after that point; the tasks made sense and had some interesting variety. It’s a linear game where the puzzles are solved in a particular sequence, which worked well as a team of two. The hint system was lovely too, a custom mechanical delivery system. Although the briefing had told us that three hints would be available, in practice our host was quite liberal in delivering clues – and because of the system used, we had the option of taking them or not. We ended up taking 62 minutes out of 75, despite the time lost at the start.

The game finished strongly, and the fun after-game photo op was an unexpected bonus. Sure, you’re not likely to travel to Gili Air so as to play this game, but the island has no shortage of charms, and if you’re here then it would be a shame to miss out on the enjoyable and well themed escape room.